greeting

Monday, December 28, 2009

I guess these are famously canceled Dead shows, so nothing really new here. The (IMO terribly overrated) February 1971 GD run at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY was actually rescheduled from December 18-20, 1970. According to Deadlists, "There is tape in circulation of a radio ad announcing and apologizing for the cancellation ("The Port Chester Apology").

The reasoning laid out in the display announcement posted to the left, whereby the GD feels that "they cannot return east without new music for the people," sounds a little bit specious to me, but maybe I am being too cynical. It's certainly true that they busted out a whole host of new tunes when they did get to Port Chester in February.

And as a Jerry-on-the-side guy, I am just as pleased to contemplate David and the Dorks at the Matrix on 12/20 than just another GD show, especially if it was to be as tedious as I find the 2/71 Port Chester shows to be.

3 comments:

There is a tape of the Dead's "apology" - http://www.archive.org/details/gd1970-12-00.portchester-apology.34788.shnf Pretty cool. It gives an idea of the 'special relationship' the Dead had with this theater.

That printed explanation, "they can't return east without new music"....pretty sketchy. (Of course, the California shows in Dec '70 didn't see anything new, except for that Crosby collaboration.) I feel Dec '70 shows at the Capitol would've been better than the Feb '71 shows we got. Apparently the reason Feb '71 turned out so repetitive & unexploratory was because the Dead were multitrack-recording those shows for the live album. (This may have been why they started taping themselves again in Dec '70, as well.) There's a discussion of this going on now, actually, at the Archive Forum (under the "3-21-70" post).